Donald Trump's repeated targeting and threats of criminal charges against billionaire George Soros are again fueling the spread of antisemitic conspiracy theories about the Jewish philanthropist. For decades, Soros, 95, has been the bête noire of conspiracy-minded actors on the far right but also on the far left and among some radical Islamist factions. He […]
Ali Dawah (born Erdi Kiliç) has built one of the largest platforms in the radical Islamist Sunni da‘wa proselytization scene. The British-Kurdish YouTuber, active since 2013, commands over 1.3 million subscribers and hundreds of millions of views. His combined social media platforms including YouTube, Instagram and others bring him close to 1.8 million followers. From […]
The shooting death of conservative media figure Charlie Kirk in Utah on September 10th sparked the usual deluge of conspiracy theories about who “really” did it and why. Within minutes, and with absolutely no supporting evidence, social media was flooded with claims that Kirk had been shot dead by a leftist transgender rights advocate, had […]
‘Nebulous’. ‘Far right’. ‘Conspiracist and anti-vax’. ‘Radical far left’: almost every label has been applied to the ‘Bloquons tout !’ (‘Let’s Block Everything!’, i.e. ‘Bring France to a Standstill!’) movement since it first emerged in early July in Telegram groups. So what exactly is it? Clearly, the reality of the movement is disparate, colorful, and […]
November 2023, halfway between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. A few weeks after the October 7 attacks, Keti Shitrit – a Likud MP, the party of Benjamin Netanyahu – appears live on television. Wearing a smart purple suit with matching jewelry and immaculate manicure, the Israeli politician chooses her words carefully. Calm but firm, she declares: […]
As the hunt for fugitive ‘sovereign citizen’ police killer Dezi Freeman continues in Australian bushland, the double murder has highlighted the deadly threat from the globalised far-right conspiracist movement. On August 26, police officers arrived at Freeman’s rural property in Porepunkah to execute a search warrant into child sex allegations. Freeman, 56, opened fire, killing […]
Born in 1936 in Haynau (Silesia), Mahler grew up in Berlin after his family was forcibly displaced in 1945. A brilliant legal mind, he studied law at the Freie Universität Berlin, where he became active in left-wing politics during the 1960s. Initially a member of the Social Democratic Party (SPD), he mingled with figures such […]
Dan Bongino is a former Fox News host and top-rating far-right podcaster who popularized conspiracy theories about the so-called “Deep State” and the “stolen” 2020 U.S. presidential election. He also encouraged the January 6, 2021, Capitol riots and spent years disputing the facts of the COVID-19 pandemic and the measures to combat it. Despite his […]
In dramatic scenes on Capitol Hill, Robert F. Kennedy Jr found himself subject to furious questioning by Democrats over his firing of the United States' entire 17-person vaccines expert advisory board and replacing it with a handpicked cabal of some of his favored anti-science conspiracy theorists. But instead of mea culpas during the hearings, Donald […]
It took barely 24 hours following the weekend assassinations of Democratic lawmakers from Minnesota, Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark, and the attempted murders of state Senator John Hoffman and his wife. While the suspected killer was still on the run, a swarm of far-right pro-Trump voices scrambled to spread conspiracies pinning the blame […]